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The “necessary war” in Afghanistan, which both presidential candidates support — the one, you know, that’s really about terrorists and Osama and all — raises as many troubling questions about who we are as the other war we’re fighting and losing.

Consider the details of this war. The aggregate civilian death toll, at the hands of the U.S. and NATO — between 6,800 and more than 8,000, according to economics professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire — is a start. But Herold’s about-to-be-released report on the bombing campaign in Afghanistan, “The Matrix of Death,” is a disturbing analysis not only of the collateral damage churned up by our terrorist-hunt in this broken nation, but of the attitude and rationality that are driving it. The report is subtitled: “The (Under)Valuation of an Afghan Life.”

This is a report on the flawed premise from which ultimate failure flows — the flawed premise that keeps hell active and guarantees an endless supply of enemies. And the more of these “enemies,” and their children, that we kill, the less safe we are, and we know this, so we lie about the numbers of dead. Most of all we lie about what we are, in fact, doing, which is fighting an irrational war, most accurately called the war to promote terror. We will not win it unless we revert to the morality of Ancient Rome: “create a wasteland and call it peace.” But that’s not winning, either.

What it is, indeed, is racism, especially the use of what is called close air support: In order to protect the lives of American and NATO (mostly white) troops, we do much of our fighting from the air, with 500- and 2,000-pound bombs, lacerating a (non-white) Afghan population we don’t even have to face.

Herold quotes John MacLachlen Gray in the U.K. Globe and Mail: “. . . the slaughter of innocent people, as a statistical eventuality is not an accident but a priority — in which Afghan civilian casualties are substituted for American military casualties.” Herold adds: “What I am saying is that when the ‘other’ is non-white, the scale of violence used by the U.S. government to achieve its stated objectives at minimum cost knows no limits.”

This is a description of U.S. policy stripped of the pretense in which it is usually cloaked. Not only are the numbers of dead downplayed significantly in official military statements and the sympathetic (mainstream) media, but those civilian dead who are acknowledged are instantly rendered “regrettable, but not our fault” by the circular, all-purpose justification that they were not deliberately targeted.

When you bomb a village, the dead are random and anonymous — and therefore, thanks to some legalistic moral loophole, no one’s fault. And this is one of the military advantages of air war, as far as I can tell. However horrific the results it produces on the ground — “I saw pieces of bodies scattered around . . . I couldn’t even make out which part was which . . . it was just flesh everywhere” — the perpetrators maintain an easy moral purity that forestalls self-doubt and revulsion.

Aerial bombardment, therefore, because of the psychological insulation of distance that it provides — especially when added to the psychological insulation of racism, which makes non-white deaths matter little or not at all — is a particularly insidious form of warfare, and its perfection is in and of itself a dire threat to humanity’s future.

And, as Herold writes: “The recent increasing reliance upon unmanned drones to dispense death and destruction in the border regions is in a sense the penultimate disconnect between killing them and saving ours.”

To put this all another way, the simple math of conventional national security — the zero-sum game of kill or be killed, our lives matter and theirs don’t — is terrifyingly counterproductive in the 21st century. It always has been, of course, but we used to be protected from its consequences by distance and ignorance. Humanity is connected now like never before, and possesses the technology of self-annihilation. Such technology cannot be contained, and thus true security has nothing to do with national borders. We cannot afford to devalue any portion of the human race.

For that reason, the most disturbing part of Herold’s report may have been his discussion of the “condolence” money paid, occasionally, to the survivors of Afghan civilians killed by our actions. These payouts have ranged from as low as $400 per dead civilian to several thousand dollars.

Herold puts this into perspective: “Approximately $80,000 was spent on the rehabilitation of every sea otter affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill, that is, ten times the condolence amount offered by the U.S. military to the family of an Afghan killed.”

This does not make me feel safe. I can’t even fathom the values that are operating here, even though they are stamped: “U.S.A.” We are already reaping what the Bush legacy has sown, but there’s a lot more that awaits us, and we have no right to be surprised when it comes.

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US Study Warns against Equipping Lebanese Army!

Hussein Assi

Readers Number : 53

04/10/2008 The ‘Washington Institute for Near East Policy,’ known as the political branch of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), issued a study in which it warned the current US administration against providing the Lebanese Army with additional aids until, at least, the spring 2009 parliamentary elections.

The study noted that the administration has requested $60 million in military assistance for Lebanon for 2009, claiming that since the bilateral military assistance program’s revitalization after the election of the pro-West March 14 coalition in 2005, the administration has provided nearly $400 million in foreign military financing (FMF) to Beirut, making Lebanon the second largest per capita recipient of US military assistance after Israel.

The study also lashed at the Lebanese Army claiming that it has taken few bold steps and has seemingly been absent on key initiatives. For instance, it accused the army of not actively pursuing Hezbollah weapons following the Israeli July 2006 war against Lebanon. Moreover, it accused the army of acting in coordination with Hezbollah during May incidents in Beirut and “colluding” with the Resistance party during the Israeli July 2006 war against Lebanon. “Concerns remain about the future disposition of the LAF as a “neutral” national institution under the command of the central government,” it added.

The study warned against a plan the Bush administration is currently considering another robust FMF package for the LAF in 2009, which would reportedly include Cobra attack helicopters. “Although the LAF has a good record of security with U.S.-provided weaponry, should the relationship between the LAF and Hezbollah formally change, legitimate questions could be raised as to whether Hezbollah might gain access to US equipment,” the writer of the study explained his position. “Hezbollah has its own cutting-edge equipment and would likely see little utility in tapping LAF stocks, but it would presumably be interested in acquiring night vision goggles, a development that would be of particular concern to Washington,” he added.

In conclusion, the study cautioned that if the so-called March 14 bloc loses the spring 2009 parliamentary elections, and a Hezbollah-led coalition heads the new government, US assistance to the Lebanese Army would likely end altogether. “Washington’s strategy of military capacity building is important, but is also insufficient and may soon be downgraded,” it noted.

“With Beirut on the brink, the task of crafting a new Lebanon policy to salvage what remains of the pro-West government will fall to the next administration,” the study stressed. “As Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army move closer to a formalized operational arrangement, Washington’s policy options regarding the LAF will likely face more constraints.”

ISRAELI AIR FORCE IS AFRAID THAT NEW US RADAR WILL COMPROMISE ISRAEL’S PLANS.

ISRAEL THREATENS TO CONSIDER LEBANON HEZBOLLAH STATE.

ISRAELI GENERAL PROMISES TO ATTACK CIVILIAN INFRASTRUCTURE FIRST INNEXT WAR ON LEBANON.

ISRAEL’S WASHINGTON MOUTHPIECE WARNS NOT TO EQUIP LEBANESE ARMY BEFORE SPRING 2009.

On this date, October 3, 2008, the American people were betrayed by those whom they had elected to represent them. The members of Congress who voted for the Wall Street “bailout” violated their oath of office to “support and defend the Constitution” … “that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same” … “and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: …”

Without holding any meaningful hearings or public discussions and listening only to those most responsible for the economic disaster, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Congress abdicated its responsibility to the American people.

Locking out most members from all discussions, the congressional “leadership” emerged from their backrooms with legislation that grants Secretary Paulson the ability to spend at least $700 billion to “take such actions as [he] deems necessary” … ” to promote financial market stability.”

Entrusting tremendous political and financial power (and a ton of borrowed money that taxpayers will have to repay with interest) into Paulson’s sole discretion, members of Congress must have been aware that, prior to his cabinet appointment in 2006, Paulson worked for 32 years at Goldman Sacks, one of the Wall Street firms that stands to benefit greatly from his “actions.”

Paulson, who cashed out his Goldman stock valued at $575 million to become the Secretary of Treasury (without having to pay any taxes on the sale), earned more than $53 million in pocket change during just his last two years at Goldman Sacks for innovations such as a new line of “Mortgage Backed Securities.” Gambling more than a trillion dollars on risky subprime second mortgages, Paulson cleverly converted them into AAA-rated “secure” investments by purchasing guarantees from the American International Group.

AIG, coincidentally, was just “bailed out” two weeks ago by Secretary Paulson for $85 billion (of borrowed money that taxpayers will have to repay with interest), averting a devastating loss by Goldman Sacks, who was holding more than $20 billion in otherwise worthless second mortgages.

Is it surprising that Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s current CEO, was present with Paulson when the decision was made to bailout AIG?

The bailout’s $700 billion price tag is only an arbitrary guess by Paulson and is most likely just the first installment of many more to come. Other economists, with more successful track records, believe the total will be much greater, perhaps $5 trillion, as concealed losses are uncovered and foreign companies dump their toxic investment waste into their American offices.

In passing the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008,” Congress ignored the “great concern” expressed by almost two hundred of the nation’s leading economists who pleaded with Congress “not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action,…” In addition to its ambiguity and long-term effects, the economists believed the bailout plan to be “a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense” and to be “desperately short-sighted.” Ultimately, more than 400 top economists, including two Nobel Prize winners, voiced opposition to the bailout.

The economists were not alone in being ignored by the politicians. It is widely reported that calls and emails to Congress from constituents were running as high as 300 to one against the bailout. Mike Whitney reports one analyst saying that “the calls to Congress are 50 percent ‘No’ and 50 percent ‘Hell, No’.” The percentages adjusted as the stock market tumbled, but public opposition to the bailout remains strong.

An AP poll only identified 30 percent of the public in favor of the bailout, and a CNN Money opinion poll found 77 percent of the people believing the bailout would benefit those most responsible for the economic downturn.

Who Benefits?

The Latin adage, Cui bono, asks “to whose death are you going?” Law enforcement investigators quickly learn that the guilty party can usually be found among those who stand to gain from a murder or other crime.

There is no doubt the bailout will most benefit some of the richest and highest paid individuals in the American economy. But, why did the politicians betray the wishes of those who elected them in favor of the criminals who committed the fraud? Perhaps the answer can be found in another Latin phrase, quid pro quo, meaning “what for what; something for something.”

Individuals working for Wall Street finance, insurance and real estate companies and the companies’ political action committees have contributed more than $47 million to the campaigns of Senator Obama (three of top five sources) and Senator McCain (top five sources), both of whom voted for the bailout.

More to the point, Wall Street has contributed more than $1.1 billion dollars to congressional candidates since 2002. Nine of the top ten House recipients of Wall Street largesse, who each received an average of $1.5 million, are on the financial oversight and taxation committees.

Even more telling, the bipartisan Congressional “leaders” most responsible for pushing the bailout through Congress, Senators Dodd and Gregg and Representatives Frank and Blunt have taken almost $20 million from Wall Street sources during the last 20 years. Dodd recently received $6 million in contributions during his presidential primary campaign, and Frank has collected $720,000 this year.

Other key players also have been well compensated this year: Congressman Kanjorski received $755,000 and Congressman Bachus banked $704,000.

Who Loses?

The ordinary, hard-working voters, who were opposed to the bailout, and their children and grandchildren, will be the ones who will ultimately have to repay, with compound interest, the money that will have to be borrowed to give away to Wall Street bankers.

The bailout was “sweetened” in the Senate by another $110 billion in tax relief and renewable energy incentives to get enough House votes for passage; however, only the temporary one-year slowdown of the Alternative Minimum Tax offered any succor to the middle-class workers affected by it.

The bailout raises the debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion, or about $37,524 for each man, woman and child in the United States. How is this burden ever going to be repaid? Workers already know their wages are falling, their jobs are at risk, their health care, food and fuel costs are skyrocketing, and they are being kicked out of their apartments and homes because they can’t pay the rents and mortgages.

Didn’t each member of Congress have a sworn duty to rescue the millions of Americans suffering from the reckless gambling of Wall Street moguls, rather than to reward an obscene excess of greed?

Foreclosure Rescue. At least six million homeowners will probably default on their mortgages this year and next, and millions more will have their equity wiped out by declining property values. More than 770,000 homes have been seized by lenders since 2007, and 91,000 families were just kicked out of their homes in August.

These American homeowners were betrayed by their elected representatives!

The only provision in the bailout legislation to remotely “benefit” homeowners whose homes are being foreclosed upon only “encourages” mortgage service companies to modify mortgages. Paulson is required to “maximize assistance for homeowners … and minimize foreclosures”; however, he also has to ensure that the government doesn’t incur any additional costs. Thus, there’s little or no hope of any meaningful benefit to distressed homeowners resulting from the bailout.

The legislation could have required the government to directly purchase the defaulting mortgages and to adjust them to the reduced value of the property, as was done in the Great Depression. Instead, Paulson is authorized to purchase the complex derivatives (Wall Street’s gambling debts) piled on top of the original mortgages. The difference is whether homeowners or Wall Street receives the benefit of the bailout.

Bankruptcy Rescue. More than 4,476 Americans filed for bankruptcy every day during August, the highest number since changes in the law in 2005 made it much more difficult, and even impossible in many cases, to obtain debt relief. More than a million, increasingly elderly, people will petition for bankruptcy this year.

These destitute Americans were betrayed by their elected representatives!

Under the current law, bankruptcy judges do not have the power to modify mortgages of a petitioner’s primary residence, irrespective of how the mortgages have been sliced, diced and repackaged. The bailout could have provided judges with the authority, in appropriate cases, to adjust the amount secured by the mortgage to the value of the property and to adjust the interest rate to a reasonable percentage.

Unemployment Rescue. New claims for unemployment benefits rose to 493,000 last week, the highest level in seven years. The economy has already lost 605,000 jobs thus far this year, and it dumped 159,000 payroll jobs just during September, the greatest drop in five years.

These unemployed Americans were betrayed by their elected representatives!

Although the House of Representatives passed an economic stimulus bill that would fund job creation and extent jobless benefits for long-term unemployed workers on September 26th, the Senate failed to pass its own stimulus bill on the same day. President Bush has promised to veto the legislation if passed.

The bailout legislation could have provided for an extension of jobless benefits, but it didn’t.

Homeless Rescue. More than 750,000 and as many as a million Americans are homeless today, and the numbers are increasing dramatically. The National Coalition for the Homeless reports that homelessness is growing because of foreclosures, loss of jobs, and the rising price of fuel and food.

These homeless Americans were betrayed by their elected representatives!

Homeless sites are appearing all across the country as people with no place to stay are pitching tents and huddling together for support and protection. Their plight did not receive any consideration by the Congressional leadership that rammed the bailout through Congress.

Hunger Rescue. The most recent report by the Department of Agriculture found that in 2006, 35.5 million Americans lived in households with insecure food supplies and the numbers were increasing. At risk children numbered more than 12.6 million, and African Americans and Hispanic Americans suffered at higher rates than the national average.

In 2006, 9.6 million Americans had to frequently skip meals or eat too little, and often had to go without food for a whole day. Today, as members of Congress voted to reward the richest and most greedy members of our society, they ignored those without the most basic necessity for survival. This morning, they rewarded the most powerful and best-fed members of our society, and gave no thought to the helpless children who will go to bed hungry tonight.

Food banks who serve as the last resort for the hungry are running out of food. They are having to reduce rations and to dip into emergency supplies of staple items. There are reports of a 40 percent increase in requests for food assistance and a 30 percent drop in supplies.

These hungry Americans were betrayed by their elected representatives!

The bailout could have increased the amount of federal assistance for food banks in the Emergency Food Assistance Program, but it didn’t.

The Consequences

The real estate bubble that has been driving the United States economy has now popped, and there is no replacement engine to transport America’s consumer society down the highway to happiness. Americans are facing the mother of all depressions; it will be hard and it will last a long time. What are all of these homeless, hopeless, and hungry people going to do?

Many have already exercised their First Amendment right to petition their government for the redress of grievances. A majority of the members of Congress, the two presidential candidates, and the President paid no attention to the economic experts and the thousands and thousands of voters who protested the bailout and who begged them to rescue the people rather than the rich and powerful.

The people can always take to the streets in protest, and they probably will do so in growing numbers as the economic circumstances become more harsh.

The U.S. government is already planning for the eventuality – not with the helping hand of supplemental legislation to help with mortgages, jobs, shelter or food, but with the mailed fist of military suppression. The Army Times reports the current deployment within the United States “homeland” of an “on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies or disasters, including terrorist attacks.” The Army acknowledges that the Northern Command may call upon the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team to help with “civil unrest and crowd control.”

With almost a trillion dollars picked from their pockets to reimburse reckless Wall Street gamblers, many Americans righteously feel betrayed tonight. A majority will elect a new president one month from tomorrow, and most will wait to see who it will be, and what if anything he can or will do to alleviate their suffering.

There are others, undoubtedly, who agree with the Supreme Court’s recent decision that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is individually held, and who believe that the use of their personal weapons is justified to overthrow a government that betrays them and which destroys their very means of existence. The right of legitimate self defense is recognized by every criminal law in America.

Perhaps democracy in the United States is not dead; if not, it’s on its deathbed. Resuscitation in the form of responsible representation is possible, but time is growing short.

ICH” — – The people of the United States are struggling with a marked escalation of the class war. Maybe no one has a firm grip on “what is to be done?”, to borrow Lenin’s phraseology. But it is for sure a time to reject fatalism, defeatism, nihilism and any other current which involves the people in rolling over to die quietly.

If Karl Marx was right, we have reached the end times not of humanity but of the capitalist economic system. It is a time when the working class was, through its collective discipline and might, supposed to conduct and win a war with the bourgeoisie and establish its rule. Then the building of socialism was to commence. War, racism and poverty would be banished in the ensuing years along with all of capitalism’s pathological influences on man.

What are the prospects for this scenario? However likely or remote, the idea should not be given up on because the other choices are too horrific to passively accept–the Orwellian state, bands of survivalists roaming a scorched landscape, the extinction of the human being.

So it comes down to a must win for the working class and its allies among the petty bourgeois over the capitalist ruling class and its allies among the petty bourgeois (those among the intelligentsia that spread hopelessness and confusion among working people for 30 pieces of silver).

There are, it seems, two loci of power in the ruling class. First are members of the class based on the ownership of the means of production–the financiers, the industrialist, and the other human repositories of massive wealth (Gates, Cheney, Paulson, the Bush Family, the Walton Family…). Then there is the military high command, the last card in the capitalist deck, without which, the civilian side of the ruling class is essentially powerless once their economic superstructure collapses.

An important question would seem to be, what is the potential for splitting the not wealthy military top brass from their masters? The rank-and-file soldier has already been deemed unreliable and so the formation and building of Blackwater, a private bourgeois shadow army. It’s possible that rather than writing the bourgeoisie’s errand boys in the Congress we should try to reach Petraeus, Fallon, Mullen, Odierno, Powell, Wilkerson and others and remind them of Cheney’s five Vietnam deferments before they acquiesce in his commands to the brigade shipping from Iraq in October to serve as “an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks” here inside the United States.

Meanwhile, on our side of the class struggle, there is admittedly no US political party or other formation which expresses the destiny of the working class to power and socialism. Class consciousness would seem to be an endangered sentiment. But think about it, would not the United States be the last place where a consciousness of themselves as a class would seize the minds of working people? That’s what empire, that’s what imperialism, that’s what racism functions to do.

Class consciousness can develop very quickly in a people though! It is on the rise in the US right now in the reaction to the proposed Wall Street bailout. It will accelerate as the material cocoon provided by the world’s dominant economy wears out.

Workers, united across all artificial boundaries created by capitalism, whether nation, race, sex, or religion are the only hope now. This is the only force capable of staying the hand of the bourgeoisie and insuring the human experiment “shall not perish from the earth”, to borrow Lincoln’s phraseology.

In your circle, however large or small that may be, in everything you write and say, draw the boundary lines clearly for people between the opposing forces in this final class war. Don’t confuse them with Democrats and Republicans. The ruling class is wealthy, we work for a living. Build our forces by raising class consciousness and giving every worker the best chance of making the right decisions in the battles just over the horizon now.

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Let’s not waste $700bn on a bail-out, but use ‘big government’ for what it’s best at – shaping a society that is fair and peaceableBy Howard Zinn

03/10/08 “The Guardian” — -This current financial crisis is a major way-station on the way to the collapse of the American empire. The first important sign was 9/11, with the most heavily-armed nation in the world shown to be vulnerable to a handful of hijackers.

And now, another sign: both major parties rushing to get an agreement to spend $700bn of taxpayers’ money to pour down the drain of huge financial institutions which are notable for two characteristics: incompetence and greed.

There is a much better solution to the current financial crisis. But it requires discarding what has been conventional “wisdom” for too long: that government intervention in the economy (“big government”) must be avoided like the plague, because the “free market” will guide the economy towards growth and justice.

Let’s face a historical truth: we have never had a “free market”, we have always had government intervention in the economy, and indeed that intervention has been welcomed by the captains of finance and industry. They had no quarrel with “big government” when it served their needs.

It started way back, when the founding fathers met in Philadelphia in 1787 to draft the constitution. The first big bail-out was the decision of the new government to redeem for full value the almost worthless bonds held by speculators. And this role of big government, supporting the interests of the business classes, continued all through the nation’s history.

The rationale for taking $700bn from the taxpayers to subsidise huge financial institutions is that somehow that wealth will trickle down to the people who need it. This has never worked.

The alternative is simple and powerful. Take that huge sum of money and give it directly to the people who need it. Let the government declare a moratorium on foreclosures and give aid to homeowners to help them pay off their mortgages. Create a federal jobs programme to guarantee work to people who want and need jobs and for whom “the free market” has not come through.

We have a historic and successful precedent. Roosevelt’s New Deal put millions of people to work, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, and, defying the cries of “socialism”, established social security. That can be carried further, with “health security” – free health care – for all.

All that will take more than $700bn. But the money is there. In the $600bn for the military budget, once we decide we will no longer be a war-making nation. And in the swollen bank accounts of the super-rich, by taxing vigorously both their income and their wealth.

When the cry goes up, whether from Republicans or Democrats, that this must not be done because it is “big government”, the citizenry should just laugh. And then agitate and organise on behalf of what the Declaration of Independence promised: that it is the responsibility of government to ensure the equal right of all to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

Only such a bold approach can save the nation – not as an empire, but as a democracy.

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0310/08 “ICH” – — It is a mystery how the Iraq war was planned and supported for a long time without an effective opposition, despite being one of the worst foreign policy decisions in recent U.S. history. But it becomes less of a puzzle if one applies to the situation some principles of social psychology. In this light, a return to the classic literature is pertinent.

In 1895, Gustave Le Bon, a French social psychologist, published a seminal book on the psychology of crowds, “La psychologie des foules.” He probably never imagined that it would become a classic in its genre and a basic source for Sigmund Freud when dealing with the same subject. Le Bon´s ideas, which are pertinent even today, were later further elaborated by other authors and put to use in other tragic historical events, as happened in Germany with the Nazis.

Although Le Bon wrote mainly about the psychology of crowds, his ideas can also be applied to populations. Even though both are different entities, they share some common characteristics. Crowds are transitory and tend to gather because they are homogeneous in their ideas about a specific subject or event. Populations are groups of people with different ways of thinking, living in a place geographically defined but who, like crowds, can be swayed by mass media or by a leader acting through it.

In his analysis of Le Bon´s work, Sigmund Freud wrote, “A crowd is trusting and easily influenced; it is non-critical. The concept of improbability doesn´t exist…. Whoever wants to influence it doesn´t need to present logical arguments. It is only necessary to paint the most alluring images, to exaggerate and to repeat the same concept several times.”

According to Le Bon, opposite ideas can coexist and be tolerated in a way that their logical contradictions do not generate a conflict. This may explain why the actions against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan were essentially abandoned when there was a serious chance of capturing him, and how a war against Iraq was initiated without facing serious opposition in the United States.

According to Le Bon, crowds are subject to the magical power of words, which can provoke the most serious storms in the soul of its members, or can also contribute to calming them down. In this regard, what greater insult can be used against a country than to call it part of an “axis of evil”?

As is now widely known, the Iraq war was conducted on false premises, something that became increasingly evident with time. However, as Le Bon pointed out, “Crowds are never thirsty for truth. They demand illusions, to which they are unable to renounce. Irreality prevails over reality, irreality acting almost as strongly as reality. The visible tendency of the crowd is not to make any difference between them.”

The George W. Bush administration used the concept of eliminating a tyrant and bringing democracy to Iraq with great effectiveness. The Iraqi tyrant, Saddam Hussein, was eliminated. But Iraq is still in chaos, corruption is rampant and the Iraqi government is clear in its decision to see the United States withdraw its forces from the country sooner than the Bush administration intends.

Both crowds and populations are subject to the influence of their leaders´ ideas. Through his actions and his words, a true leader can bring peace to a country, and to the world. When a leader is misguided, a terrible war can be his most devastating legacy.

Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for an article on human rights. He is the foreign correspondent for the Middle East Times International (Australia).

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03/10/08 “ICH” — – The events of the last two weeks have clearly revealed that the global financial, monetary and banking system imposed on the world by the power structures promoting “globalization” is fundamentally flawed, unviable and immoral in its effects upon the most all of Mankind. After allowing a small cabal of shady characters to illegitimately accumulate vast amounts of wealth and power over markets, corporations, industries, media, armed forces and entire nations, like the World Trade Center towers on 9/11, this entire System is now in free-fall, collapsing into itself in one massive implosion.

This loathsome and unjust Global Power System was designed and implemented over the past seven decades by the geopolitical and geoeconomic strategic planners serving the New World Order power structures, most notably its network of discrete, low-profile but highly powerful private think tanks, such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR, founded in New York in 1919), The Trilateral Commission (founded in 1973), The Bilderberg Conference (formed in Holland in 1954), and others like the Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and the notorious Neo-con Project for a New American Century (PNAC) (1).

Considering the enormous complexity of the process that is taking place right now; the vast amounts of information we are bombarded with every minute of the day, and the apparent difficulty in foreseeing just how this global crisis will finally be resolved, we would summarize certain important aspects and key data which we believe will help us put together this veritable jig-saw puzzle, so that we may begin to fathom what the true face of this horrendous creature euphemistically called “globalization”, is really like. As Argentine citizens, we have a huge advantage over other peoples including US citizens when it comes to understanding and coping with this kind of crisis. I say this because in our own lifetimes we have suffered in Argentina all of what is now happening globally – albeit on a much smaller scale in our case. We’ve seen this movie… We’ve been there, and done that… We’ve been pushed and dragged through the entire hysterical hocus-pocus of inflation, hyperinflation, systemic banking collapses, currency changes, Debt Bond Swaps, Mega-Debt Bond Swaps, financial “armouring”, banking holidays, freezing of bank accounts, etc., etc… And we have also suffered the end-results: bank bail-outs paid for by taxpayers (or through inflation, or through the confiscation of savings), disappearance of pension funds, destruction of job posts and overall impoverishment of the population.

So, take a clue from our thirty years’ experience in “financial meltdowns”: GO GET YOUR DOLLARS OUT FROM YOUR BANK NOW, AND DO IT FAST!!!!

A Flawed Model

Finance versus Economics –

The financial system (i.e., the basically virtual, unreal and parasitic wonderworld of banking), was designed to function in a way increasingly contrary to the interests of the Economy (i.e., the real world of concrete work, labour and production/services). In recent decades, Finance and the Economy have increasingly parted paths, ceasing to maintain the essential balance and equilibrium that is necessary for ensuring healthy economic activity centered on the Common Good of the People. In fact, Finance and Economy have today become all but total enemies. This can be seen, for example, by the fact that the present Global Economic and Financial System rests almost completely on the concept of DEBT, which is another way of saying that the Real Economy is always controlled by, and subservient to, the interests, whims and crises of Virtual Finance.

The Debt System -

The Doctrine (or, should I say, Dogma) of Extreme Capitalism has imposed the concept of DEBT as the preferred way to move the economy. In most countries (Argentina, for example) this means that there is no proper use of the local National Currency by the State to generate credit in a controlled and non-Interest bearing manner. This is the best way of fueling economic expansion for specific social, defense, infrastructure, and technological developments, always focusing on the Common Good and prioritizing the National Interest. One of Extreme Capitalism’s key dogmas says that central banks controlling the national currency must be totally “independent” of Government. However, since all such institutions must finally respond to somebody somewhere, we thus discover that nowadays central banks are subordinated and subservient not to the State (i.e., the People), but rather to the private banking superstructure, both local and global, which naturally leaves the whole concept of the Common Good and National Interest almost totally aside.

This is so in Argentina as in other countries, however in the case of the United States this is particularly extreme because its central bank – the Federal Reserve Bank (FED) – is a private institution, with almost 97% of its unique shareholding structure in the hands of the private banking infrastructure itself, both domestic (in a first instance) as well as global (if we look further afield). Once the private banking superstructure achieves control of the local central bank, it is then in a position to impose chronic and often drastic under-monetization of the Economy.

This means that there is never enough money to satisfy the true needs of the Real Economy. That’s when the private banks come on stage offering to close that artificially generated “gap”, becoming the prime credit generators of the economy, for which they charge interest – often at usury rates – for loans made to individuals, companies and even the State itself. We should also understand that the key source of inflation in all economies lies not so much in monetary expansion by the State (if this is kept in sync with true economic growth), but rather most inflation in any economy is fueled by interest bearing loans made by the private banking sector.

At a Geoeconomic level (2), this has also served to generate massive public debt in Third World countries like Argentina,. fueled by rampant corruption amongst the individuals involved in the lending and borrowing process, and supported by Governments that never seem to understand how to use the sovereign functions inherent in their power to issue money to fund and promote balanced economic growth. Instead, these countries adopt IMF-designed neoliberal policies on key matters spanning from central banking functions, fiscal policies, debt, rates of interest and exchange, to banking regulations and other key factors, that have all been twisted out of shape so that they run counter to the country’s National Interest.

Fractional Reserve Banking System –

This is a universaly applicable banking concept in today’s global marketplace, that allows the private banking infrastructure to generate “Virtual Money” literally out of thin air (i.e., electronic credit lines, loans and the like) in a proportion of 6, 10, 30 or 50 times more than the actual Real Money they hold in their bank vaults.

To add insult to injury, the banks then charge you hefty interest rates for the “money” they created out of nothing and “lent” to you, whilst they require collateral consisting of real stuff like your home, your car, or your company. The proportion between the number of Dollars or pesos in their vaults and the amount of credit they can generate, is determined by the local central bank (remember: controlled by the private banks themselves), is called minimum monetary reserves under the Fractional Reserve Banking System and reflects a statistical estimate of what portion of deposit holders will normally visit the bank to withdraw their money in cash. The problem is that the concept of “normal” is basically a group or collective psychological factor, intimately linked to the perception that deposit-holders have regarding the financial system in general, and individual banks in particular. When “abnormal” times come – and boy have they come today!! – then people panic and run to their banks all at the same time, demanding to withdraw their money, not as electronic blips on the ATM machine, but as hard cash.

That was when we all discovered that the amount of Real Money in each bank’s vaults was not suffient to pay all depositors, except for a handful (normally privileged insiders who “saw it all coming”). For the rest: of us, there was nothing left and the banking system collapsed. That’s when in the US for example, and barring any taxpayer funded bail-outs, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) indemnifies up to 100.000 dollars in the US or, in Argentina, that’s when we all realized that we had all been totally robbed, and took to the streets to uselessly bang our pots and pans on the banks’ monumental iron-clad gates, conveniently shuttered the night before… All thanks to the inherently fraudulent Fractional Reserve Banking System. This is what happened in Argentina in 2001 and this is what is unfolding right now in the US.

Investment Banking –

In the US, Commercial or Main Street banks like Bank of America, JPMorganChase or CitiGroup are allowed to generate 8 to 10 “Virtual” – i.e., fake – Dollars for every Real Buck they have in their vaults. This scheme is controlled by the authorities, i.e., the FED and the Comptroller of the Currency. However, so called “investment banks” in the US and elsewhere, do not need to comply with any such requirements; they are the ones making Mega-Loans to Corporations, the US Government and foreign Governments like Argentina’s, which is why they are far less controlled and regulated This means that for every Real Dollar they hold, these investment bankers can create 26 “virtual” Dollars (Goldman Sachs), 30 “virtual” Dollars (Morgan Stanley), more than 60 (Merrill Lynch, just before they went bust), or more than 100 in the cases of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. (3)

Channeling and Transference System -

Another key factor lies in the way that the global financial system has structured automatic channels to bring in profits and transfer away all losses throughout the entire system. This has the effect that in times of great growth and gigantic profits (i.e., when the whole system grows), it is stable and allows creating many trillions of dollars out of thin air). That’s when profits are conveniently privatized, i.e., they naturally flow into the pockets of shareholders, speculators, directors, CEO’s, top management, “investors” and other key stakeholders in financial institutions and Corporate infrastructure. But when the system suddenly contracts, and tail-spins out of control as is happening now, then mechanisms are conveniently activated to socialize all losses through State-funded bailouts, special loans, FED-funded acquisitions via specific “vehicles” like JPMorgan, Citicorp and Bank of America, so that it is the domestic and foreign populations as a whole who end up paying the bill, through such phenomenae as inflation, hyperinflation (oh, we know a lot about that in Argentina!!), banking collapses, tax hikes, debt defaults, nationalizations, etc). The 4 Pillars of the Extreme Capitalist Model – In short the key factors described above, in the long-term all function together in a coordinated, consistent and synchronized manner, which means that, even if in the short- and medium-terms there are spates of high profits where money is sloshed around big time, in the long-term the whole system just doesn’t add up. That’s when you have periodic meltdowns like today’s. Usually, they are explained away by well-paid economic gurus writing brainy explanations in The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times or New York Times, who tell us that this is all just part of “the economic cycle”. For the most part, they can isolate sections of those downturns and localize them, so that they only affect a couple of emerging markets…

Like Argentina in 2001, or Brasil in 1999, or Mexico in 1997. In short, these four pillars are:

2. Private banking based on Fractional Reserves – As a system, this allows banks to create money out of thin air, charging interest for it – often at usury rates -, and generating huge profits for “investors” and creditors;

3. Debt – This is the key concept that “fuels” private and public economies replacing the far more economically sound concept of reinvesting company profits and promoting a savings culture. Those who benefit from the unnecessary creation of debt need to promote and instigate among the public at large in all countries, fericiously undisciplined consumerism and greed, which goes hand in hand with total rejection of the very concept of saving and preparing for a rainy day. (4)

4. Privatize Profits /Socialize Losses – As a channelling and transference scheme for the various stages of the recurrent “cycles”, so that when they reach the inexorable stage where collapse is nunavoidable, there is always a way of making the population at large pay the bill.

Key Data and Concepts

A brief summary of the key events of this year leading up to the present terminal crisis of the global financial system can be very enlightening and revealing:

March 2008: Investment bank Bear Stearns (assets for $399 billion) collapses and is acquired by JPMorgan Chase through a FED-funded credit for u$s 30 billion. On March 7, the FED offers up to u$s 200 billion in 28-day loans to banks and large financial institutions. On March 11, the FED offers investment banks up to $200 billion in Treasury Securities in exchange for mortgage-backed securities. On March 21st, the European Central Bank offered up to u$s 24 billion in loans to help banks shore up balance sheets. The Bank of England in turn offers up to u$s 10 billion in loans.

7 September 2008: The US’s two largest mortgage agencies – Freddie Mac (assetsts for u$s 879 billion) and Fannie Mae (assets for u$s 885.9 billion) are taken over by the FED, at a direct cost of u$s 200 billion, and the US Governement now owns their u$s 5.4 trillion combined debt

15 September 2008: The US’s fourth largest investment bank, Lehman Brothers (assets for u$s 966.2 billion) collapses. At the same time, investment bank Merrill Lynch (assets for u$s 639.4 billion) is bailed out by Bank of America at a cost of u $s 50 billion (unofficially funded by the FED, considering Bank of America did not have funds for such an acquisition)

16 September 2008: The central banks of the US, European Union UK, Japan, Switzerland and Canada set up a u$s 180 billion emergecy currency swap fund

17 September 2008: The largest insurance company in the US and the world, American International Group (AIG) (assets for u$s 1.050 trillion), is nationalized 80% by the FED at a cost of u$s 85 billion. The decision to salvage this insurance company (a decision that should have been taken by State insurance commissioners, not the FED) lies in the fact that it would have dragged down key banks like Goldman Sachs. This explains why Goldman’s CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein, was the only Wall Street banker invited to participate in the last minute bail-out talks by FED governor Bernard B. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Notably, before becoming George W Bush’s Treasury Secretary in June 2006, Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs, at which time he was replaced by Blankfein.

19 September 2008: Henry Paulson, Bernard Shalom Bernanke and Christopher Cox (chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission – SEC) submitted to Congress an urgent 3-page Bail-out Plan (similar in style to Argentina’s “financial armouring” of December 2000 which paved the way for 2001’s total financial meltdown), to the tune of u$s 700 billion which is supposed to stop further banking and financial failures in the US and worldwide. The urgency of the matter could be read in their panicky faces nut the bill crashed in the House of Rerpesentative which rejected it ob 22-Sept-08. It has since then grown to a 450-page dossier, now approved by the Senate and being resubmitted to the House.

Paulson and Bernanke seek “superpowers” from Congress, similar to the ones that former economy minister Domingo Cavallo wrenched from Argentina’s Congress in 2001, which led to total collapse. In various declarations, president George W Bush stressed time and again the dire situation of this “national emergency”. When asked how the amount of u$s 700 billion was arrived at, Bernanke replied that it represents 5% (!!!) of mortgages that have become non-performing. Independent analysts, however, reckon that this 5% is insufficient to cover all bail-outs and that we need to look at 10, 15 or 20 percent of non-performing mortgages, which would turn bail-out figures into unfathomable amounts. Rejection of the bail-out plan on “Bloody Monday” led to a collapse of the Dow Jones Industrial Index by 778 points (more than 7%) and a 16% fall for financial institutions. Not surprisingly, in their 21st September edition the London newspaper “The Daily Telegraph” pointed out that we may be edging towards a US Government default on its entire u$s 13.5 trillion debt.

The two remaining investment banks still considered to be “healthy” – ie}.e., prestigious Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley – decided to voluntarily become commercial banks, and thus accept greater regulatory scrutiny. This means they will need to very quickly and orderly reduce their loan portfolios which they overly expanded through fractional lending, as described above. Meanwhile and as a transitory emergency measure, financier Warren Buffet took a u$s 5 billion stake in Goldman Sachs to help it become “more healthy”, a clear indication of just how critical the situation is.

22 September 2008: After a strange period of silence regarding its situation as a major bank, CitiGroup finally appeared on the scene helping to engineer two bank bail-outs: Washington Mutual Savings & Loan (the largest thrift in the US with assets for u$s 309.7 billion), and Wachovia Bank (assets for u$s 812.4 billion), although Wachovia is having second thoughts and may strike a deal with Wells Fargo..

September 22nd to 30th: The contagion crosses the Atlantic sending Europe into a crisis with a series of domino-like bank collapses:

Glitnir (a major Islandic bank nationalized 75% by the government at a cost of u$s 900 billion; assets for u$s 48.9 billion). Clearly, these amounts are truly staggering as in their aggregate they are greater than the United States’s Gross Domestic Product, which gives a taste of things to come, considering that rumours of further banks failures on both sides of the Atlantic still continue: UniCredit, a pan-European bank based in Italy, which owns the German HypoVereinsbank and the Bank Austria.

UBS based in Zurich, Switzerland, and National City Corporation, Downey Financial Corporation and Sovereign Bancorp, of the United States All these and more have high risk exposures to “toxic” mortgage securities, to use the charming term coined by Bernanke from the FED… Lastly, major press media and international analysts insist that the bill for these bail-outs will fall on “US Taxpayers” through future tax hikes. This is clearly only a half-truth. The full truth is that, as far as the US is concerned, the bulk of these bail-outs will be paid with even more uncontrolled monetary emission by the FED, which will further erode the value of the Dollar. In short, the cost for this desaster will be paid by companies, governments and individuals who have US-Dollar denominated assets throughout the world, and not just by the “American Taxpayers”

Plausible Scenarios

The crisis affecting the global financial system based on parasitic speculation and usury is a terminal crisis. It can no longer be solved through purely financial and monetary mechanisms and measures. If US authorities only concentrate on this type of measure, then a truly serious collapse is imminent and unavoidable.

A more pragmatic view of the global and US power structures, however, indicates that the US will not just stand by whilst this occurs, allowing the demise of the US as a global superpower. The US will not just turn-off the lights, and go home as the Soviet Nomenklatura did in the early nineties. No sir. They’re gonna put up a hell of fight!! And that is a problem for all the peoples of the world, as well as for the people of the United States themselves. In this sense, we envision several scenarios out of which we have singled out three clearly defined scenarios which must no doubt have their respective alternative action plans to address this growing crises:

This envisions continuing on-going negotiations between the FED, Treasury Dept., Congress, major bankers, European and Asian central bankers seeking further measures to stop further black-holes and bank failures, lobbying for further u$s 700 billion bail-out plans to be wrenched out of Congress and elsewhere. This will serve to control the crisis in the days and weeks to come by helping banks in trouble, including medium-sized banks anf foreign banks operating in the US (e.g. your HSBC’s, Barclays’, Deutsche Bank’s and others), and most important, the remaining major Mega-banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and CitiGroup. The immediate effect of this will be that there will be drastic and far-reaching crisis management through financial and monetary measures. At the same time, new rules of the game will be dealt in Wall Street and Washington. The practical result will be massive transference of wealth away from small investors, pension funds, small stockholders, etc., and into the hands of the usual cabal of bankers, institutional investors, speculators and financial parasites.

If Congress does not approve the bail-out plan, or significantly limits it, or even if Congress does approves it, it were to prove insufficient in the days and weeks to come with a further spate of major banking and insurance company failures, then the US Government – i.e., the Fed and Treasury Dept. – might very well declare a “National Economic Emergency” and introduce a totally new currency.

No, not the “Amero” which is a smoke-screen rumour, but rather something far more straight to the point: a “New Dollar” which, contrary to the present devalued dollar, would be Gold-backed, however not by just any gold: it will be 9999 proof gold bullion, with some sort of 100% fool-proof security factor – e.g., either an embedded chip or hologram that will transform it into “Global Reserve Gold”, or financially “sacred” gold – that will have a value maybe ten times higher than normal “profane” Gold. At the same time, an extended banking holiday will be declared in order to implement the change of currency (just as happened in Argentina several times in recent history, notably when former president Alfonsín introduced the “Austral” to replace the highly devalued peso).

Transition to the new currency will be at terms highly beneficial for those banks, companies, citizens, allies and other “preferred allies and friends” of the US who will get One New Dollar for each “old” dollar. Then, certain powerful holders of dollar-denominated instruments – cash, US Treasury Bills and Bonds, and the like – will be given some preferential treatment based on specific US geopolitical and geoeconomic interests such as, for example, the governments and interests of the European Union, Japan, maybe China, and specific institutions and global corporations who will be able to change their old dollars for New Dollars at acceptable rates of exchange, say 2, 3 or 4 old dollars for every New Dollar.

For the rest of dollar-holders – i.e., vast numbers of private investors in all parts of the world in countries in Latin America, Central Europe, the Muslim World, Africa, etc. – the US Government will simply say that their respective local markets will need to determine how many old dollars will buy a New Dollar, and that this will be governed by the market forces of supply and demand. We will then see currency traders of all shapes and sizes offering One New Dollar for every 8, 10, or 20 old dollars in the hands of desperate masses of people trying to get rid of those creased green-backed bits of paper of falling value.(5)

The immediate effect of this would be to further spread the socializing of US banking losses into emerging markets and weaker economies outside of the United States (i.e., New Dollar would allow the bankers to selectively export the US currency’s inflationary erosion towards specific regions and segments of the world).

If the US authorities cannot resolve the crisis with financial, monetary and economic measures, and increasing internal social violence and political insecurity were to affect the US and its key allies, then the crisis will go into geopolitical and military mode. If an extended banking holiday is forced upon the Bush administration, freezing banking accounts, deposits, ATM machines (just like the “Corralito” – i.e., the “baby play pen” – that Argentina suffered starting 1st December 2001 generating unimaginable hardship to our country), this may later lead to trying to resolve the problem on a the international geopolitical stage by “kicking the chessboard”.

This means escalating the overall conflict to political, diplomatic and military planes, fueling a generalized global war which New World Order planners seem to believe will allow them to use vast resources for war, placing the focus away from the on-going financial crisis. This will lead to imposing strict limitations on all civil liberties in the US and elsewhere, and even suspending the Constitution (We Argentines certainly know a lot about that too!).

“National Security” will be the blanket excuse at a time of grave internal emergency, and will be used to justify unilateral invasions of countries and regions in different parts of the world. In short, mobilizing the country and its allies in its material resources, whilst the collective psyche is coaxed on the need to “defend” the country against some elusive “enemy” (new or old terrorist organization suitably demonized). One of the results that would be sought would be to re-stabilize the economiy and financial system gearing it on a re-intensified military-industrial complex where the US has an unmatched position – foreign wars are always good to steer attention away from domestic troubles.

The immediate effect of this would very likely consist of a unilateral military attack on Iran with the excuse of destroying its nuclear program , that would probably be triggered by a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities once they get a green light from Washington. This would quickly bring the US into the war with incalculable consequences. Worse still, we may see a carefully orchestrated False Flag mega-attack (i.e., an attack organized or prompted by the New World Order power structures themselves, designed to put the blame on Iran or Islamic organizations, or whatever, so that it can be used as an excuse for a unilateral attack against Iran, Syria and elsewhere).

Such a False-Flag attack might take place on American soil or against US interests anywhere in the world, or those of key US allies, and would make 9/11 look like a mere bonfire in comparison. The New World Order media would ensure that global public opinion believe that Iran in particular, and the Muslim world as a whole, are responsible for such an attack and thus justify a whole series of “counter-attacks”, invasions and wars. No doubt, Russia would also become involved recking havoc throughout Central Europe thus weakening the European Union.

A generalized war in the Middle East would be sufficient excuse to pass legislation to free up oil reserves in Alaska, justify invading Venezuela’s oil fiels, militarize the South Atlantic continental platform in the Brazilian and Argentine maritime regions where gigantic oil reserves lie untapped and where the US Navy’s IVth Fleet is already roaming, amongst many other things. China, India and Pakistan will no doubt have important roles to play and if tactical nuclear artefacts are used, then this would turn into a veritable nuclear world war which no one knows how it will continue and end.

This summary merely sets out some information, patterns and conclusions which help stress the extremely grave times all Mankind is presently living under. Its result will deeply affect the whole world. We offer these ideas as a sort of initial exercise in Global Risk Management, hoping that it will serve as a starting point to promote better and greater strategic planning exercises amongst public and private organizations in Argentina and elsewhere.

Even though Argentina’s very mediocre ruling class – both in Government and in the so-called “Opposition” – hardly understand nor fathom the true significance of what is taking place in the world, the truth is that this crisis opens incredilble new vistas for Argentina and our region. We would have the opportunity of making an unprecedented Quantum Leap, however in order to take advantrage of these opportunities, we need to fully comprehend how the New World Order power structures actually work, in what refers to their political, economic, financial and monetary dynamics, objetives and methods. We strive that Argentine public opinion should begin to understand all of this as quickly as possible; hence the uregency of the matter.

Either way, the days and weeks to come will be very transcendental for all Mankind. Let us all be very alert…

Adrian Salbuchi is a prominent author and economic analyst based in Argentina. He is part of the Argentine Second Republic Movement

Adrian Salbuchi

NOTES

(1) We have extensively described how the private global power structures actually work in various books and article, notably in the full-length 472 page book “El cerebro del mundo: la cara oculta de la globalización ” (Ediciones del Copista, Córdoba, 2003, 4th Edition) and in “Bienvenidos a la jungla: dominio y supervivencia en el Nuevo Orden Mundial” (Editorial Anábasis, Córdoba, 2005). There is an English language synopsis of the former – “The World’s Mastermind: the Hidden Face of Globalization” available in our website ww.asalbuchi.com.ar or in www.globalresearch.ca. (2) “Geoeconomics” has been introduced by the New York based Council on Foreign Relations through the Maurice Greenberg Fellowship,i.e., the same financier who was chairman and CEO of collapsed AIG – American International Group – who had to resign in 2005 amid a major Corporate scandal.

(3) Data extracted from The New York Times, 22-Sept-08

(4) Anotable part of this crisis in the US is also focused on the huge debt of individuals with credit card companies, at present estimated in more than one trillion dollars, where financing is at usury interest rate levels of 19 to 25 percent (FoxNews, 25 Sept 08).

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